Request Serious Crank Help........

I was getting ready to pull my old Strongarm cranks off to replace them with my Race Face cranks. Using the old trusty crank extrator, I tightened it down and began to try and pull the cranks. At the point that the cranks usually began to move, I noticed a little more resistance and gave it a little more torque. Instead of the cranks moving the crank extractor attached to the cranks internal threads started pulling out and proceeded to strip the cranks threads on the drive side. I went over and tested the non drive side and the same thing. This time I did not force the issue so the threads are still intact. My question is how in the hell can I get these cranks off? I don't mind if the bottom bracket has to die in the process, I just don't want to mess up the bb shell on the frame.

Help me please! I have a day off work without the wife and kids and I can't ride. This sucks.

couple things to try..

When installing the crank extractor, make sure the central part that contacts the end of the axle is the right size, i.e. is making full contact with the axle and not the crank arm itself (it can happen with certain combos). Make sure that the central part is fully retracted so that the part you are screwing onto the crank arm goes in completely and uses all it's threads. Tighten that part down with a wrench. Turn the extractor part until it becomes tight against the axle, then start giving it some light taps on the end with a hammer. You are trying to just kind of shock the arm loose by breaking the corrosion that has likely occured between the axle and the arm. Soaking in some penetrating oil or the like will help. Keep tightening and tapping.

As for the already buggered drive side, you might be down to the gear puller/brute force method. This of course assumes you don't care about the crank arms any more.

Did you remove the washers when you took out the bolts? If you've wrecked the treads inside the crank arms then the puller will no longer help up and your crank arms are worthless because even if you get them off You would not want to put them back on anything else ever again. An auto repair shop or auto supply shop may have a gear puller tool. It's a tool designed to pull gears off spindels. This tool may work.

Last resort is cut the BB spindel or cut the cranks where they are attached and bang them off with a hammer.

We just had this problem trying to remove the cranks on one of my friend's bikes. We tried removing them with my puller and really torqued on it and broke the puller. Fortunately, the threads in the arm didn't strip.... yet.

Then we took it to a bike shop for 'professional' help. They quickly stripped out the threads on one of the arms, which rendered the cranks useless . Fortunately there was no charge for the labor.

Having nothing to lose at this point, we took the bike to my house, got out the Sawzall, and cut into the crank arm as far as we could, then drove a chisel into the cut with a hammer, split the arm and it slid it off the spindle without a fight. Pretty easy .

The shop gave us a new arm to replace the one they ruined, so I got a new puller and tried to remove the other arm with it, but using a cheater pipe on the puller, we easily stripped the threads in the arm, just as the bike shop had done. So, we got out the Sawzall again and did the same thing to that arm as the other one. No more stuck cranks .

Fortunately, these cranks were not expensive and no love was lost when we chucked them in the recycle bin.

Success

I was finally able to get the non-drive side arm off using the advice I got from Alibi. I threaded the crank puller (he he he, he said crank puller) onto the crank arm. I then tightened the extrator spindle down tight against the bb axle. I then tapped on the end of the crank puller with hammer. I then would tighten the spindle some more, tap tap tap, tighten, tap tap tap, tighten and finally the crank arm came off. I then tried the same method on the drive side, which was pretty much stripped clean of threads and did not have any luck. So I then began to take the bb out starting with the non-drive side and during this process the drive side bb loosened just enough that I could remove the whole bb using an old bb wrench I had laying around. The other crank arm is still on the damn thing. But I really appreciate all of your help on this. This damn forum is the best for getting quick help on odd repairs.